VARIATIONS ON VARIATIONS ON A THEME

LAURA HART NEWLON

A.In 1956, the NATO Phonetic Alphabet was born, part of the International Code of Signals (INTERCO). INTERCO incorporated visual and auditory signals such as semaphores, blinking lights, whistles, sirens, foghorns and bells meant to communicate instructions for navigation1.

Used by different international and national organizations, the NATO Phonetic Alphabet unified previous language systems, creating a shared lexicon that could be easily transmitted with fidelity despite distance or poor reception.

A.My friend’s Suzuki Samurai had a dusty tape deck that would occasionally eat the cassettes she pulled from the console. As Sports played over and over, Huey Lewis’ voice would squeal and drag as he covered Hank Williams’ ‘Honky Tonk Blues’ at the end of side B, the polyester tape film stretching, the degrading magnetic particles distorting the signal2. Eventually, the gray coating began to flake off in small bits of dust creating songs made increasingly of misalignments and gaps.

A.Representatives from 31 countries collectively chose the NATO Phonetic Alphabet words based on their ability to be repeated and understood in proximity to each other3. Discrepancies exist in the pronunciation of the NATO code words, often based on their transcription and reproduction4.

C.What of the distortion itself? What kind of space is possible as magnetic fields weaken, fidelity wanes, language systems ellide and bend? How much skeleton remains to tether loosened phrases, broadcasts punctuated by dropouts? In the absence of definite clarity, one returns again and again to the familiar, a place of orientation, where pieces of a fragmented vocabulary can be recovered and recombined.

1 International Code of Signals , United States Edition, 1969 Edition (Revised 2003), Chapter 1, pages 18–19, 148.2 Honky Tonk Blues has been covered by at least 31 different bands since it was first released by Williams in 1952.3 Pamphlet included in the 1955 ICAO phonograph recording, viewable at The Postal History of ICAO, Annex 10 – Aeronautical Telecommunications , retrieved 22 April 2017.4 International Civil Aviation Organization, Aeronautical Telecommunications: Annex 10 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation , Volume II (Fifth edition, 1995), Chapter 5, 38–40.